RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Iran war takes colour out of Japanese snack maker Calbee’s chips packaging

    Source: Reuters

    “Japan’s top maker of snacks has landed on a creative solution to conserve oil-derived ​input materials: it will switch its brightly coloured packaging to black and white. In an ‌eye-catching move, Tokyo-based Calbee on Tuesday said it would temporarily use only two ink colours on 14 of its products including its Potato Chips, Kappa Ebisen snacks and the Frugra breakfast cereal. Products with the revised packaging will ​hit store shelves from May 25, it said. … Japanese companies ​have lately sought to minimise the impact of rising costs and input material shortages even as the ​government seeks to reassure the public and businesses over supplies. Printing ink requires naphtha, an oil derivative for which Japan relies on imports from the Middle East for about 40% of its consumption.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/snacks-giant-calbee-crunched-by-iran-related-ink-shortage-switches-monotone-2026-05-12/

  • UK: Starmer tells cabinet meeting he intends to remain leader despite calls to resign

    Source: CBC News [Canadian state media]

    “British Prime Minister Keir Starmer defied calls to resign on Tuesday, telling ministers he would ‘get on with governing’ despite a ‘destabilizing’ 48 hours of growing calls to set out ​a timetable for his departure after an election drubbing. At ​a meeting of his cabinet team of ministers, Starmer, in the top job for less than two years, repeated that ​while he took responsibility for one of his Labour Party’s worst ⁠election defeats, there had ⁠been no official move to trigger ‌a leadership contest. … Starmer’s defiance was in marked contrast to the feelings of many in his Labour Party. On Tuesday, a junior minister resigned after a handful of ministerial aides also left ​the government. Housing, communities and local government minister Miatta Fahnbulleh stepped down and urged Starmer ‘to do the right thing for the country.'” (05/11/26)

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/starmer-uk-resign-cabinet-9.7196157

  • eBay rejects GameStop’s $56 billion takeover bid

    Source: CNBC

    “eBay on Tuesday rejected GameStop’s $56 billion takeover proposal, calling the unsolicited bid ‘neither credible nor attractive.’ GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen last week unveiled an audacious bid for eBay, offering to acquire the online marketplace for $125 per share in a cash-and-stock deal. eBay is much larger than the video game retailer, with a market cap of just over $48 billion, while GameStop’s is roughly $10.3 billion. … Many Wall Street analysts threw cold water on the deal, citing a lack of meaningful synergies between the two companies. ” (05/11/26)

    https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/12/ebay-rejects-gamestops-takeover-ryan-cohen.html

  • Pakistan: Bomb Rigged to Rickshaw Explodes in Bazaar, Killing Nine

    Source: US News & World Report

    “A bomb rigged to a rickshaw exploded in a bazaar in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding more than two dozen others, police said, in the latest sign of escalating violence in the region bordering Afghanistan. The attack took place in Lakki Marwat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police chief Azmat Ullah said. He said that two traffic police officers and a woman were among those killed. Ullah provided no further details but said traffic police officers were apparently the target of the attack. The bombing also damaged nearby shops. Most of the dead and wounded were passersby, he said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-05-12/bomb-rigged-to-rickshaw-explodes-in-pakistan-bazaar-killing-9-and-wounding-more-than-2-dozen-others

  • CA: Mayor to plead guilty to working as a Chinese agent

    Source: United Press International

    “Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of acting as an illegal agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday, the same day she resigned from office. The 58-year-old is expected to formally plead guilty in the coming weeks to the charge of acting in the United States as an illegal agent, which is punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment. The Justice Department said in a release that Wang admits in her plea agreement to working with Yaoning ‘Mike’ Sun, 65, to operate U.S. News Center, which purported to be a news source for the Chinese-American community, but was used to spread pro-People’s Republic of China content.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/05/11/Arcadia-mayor-charged/3651778548120/

  • Lebanon: Israeli military kills six, issues more displacement threats

    Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

    “Israel’s military has killed six people in an air raid on a house in southern Lebanon, the latest violation of a United States-brokered truce that has only ever existed on paper. The Israeli attack on Monday night targeted a house in the Kfar Dounin municipality, some 100km (60 miles) south of Beirut, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said. … The air raid is the latest in a near-daily series of Israeli attacks despite an April 16 ceasefire, during which Hezbollah has also exchanged fire. Israel’s air force says it has targeted more than 1,100 sites in Lebanon since the so-called truce began.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/12/israeli-military-kills-six-in-lebanon-issues-more-displacement-threats


  • How a Probable Situation Room Leak Made Someone $580 Million in 60 Seconds

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by Thomas Karat

    “At 6:49 a.m. on Monday, March 23, the oil futures market was quiet. Pre-dawn Mondays are always quiet. There was no scheduled data release, no Federal Reserve speech, no obvious catalyst for any significant market activity. Then, in the span of 27 seconds, roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts were sold — a notional value of approximately $580 million …. Simultaneously, approximately 6,000 S&P 500 e-Mini futures contracts were purchased, representing more than $2 billion in notional value. Sell oil. Buy stocks. A perfectly paired bet that would only make sense if you knew — if you were certain — that the geopolitical picture was about to improve dramatically. At 7:05 a.m., sixteen minutes later, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States and Iran had been engaged in ‘productive conversations’ to end the war.” (05/11/26)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/how-a-probable-situation-room-leak-made-someone-580-million-in-60-seconds/

  • Europe’s Green Deal Is Unraveling

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Mohamed Moutii

    “Over the past decade, Europe has played a leading role in shaping global climate policy, highlighted by the launch of the European Green Deal in 2019 — Ursula von der Leyen described it as a ‘man on the moon moment.’ The initiative aims to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050 while fostering innovation and strengthening its industrial base. Yet several years later, the results are deeply disappointing. Instead of meeting its goals, the Green Deal is increasingly associated with higher energy costs, weakened competitiveness, and growing political backlash.” (05/11/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/europes-green-deal-is-unraveling/

  • Trump’s troop withdrawals from Germany might backfire. Here’s why.

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by George Beebe

    “At first glance, the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw two battalions from Germany and cancel the planned deployment of intermediate-range ground-launched missiles there looks like a win for those who favor reducing America’s overseas military presence or prioritizing the Indo-Pacific over Europe. But how the United States retrenches and refocuses its foreign policy ambitions matters enormously. And the way this announcement was handled could ultimately prove to be a setback for both so-called ‘restrainers’ and ‘prioritizers’ as they seek to reshape U.S. foreign policy strategy.” (05/11/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/germany-troop-withdrawal/

  • The Inconsistencies of John Stuart Mill

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Wanjiru Njoya

    “Mill depicted socialist precepts in a way that would seem attractive to liberals who are constantly striving to create a better world. The quest for utopia — or as close to utopia as can be achieved with the right sorts of government interventions — is the quintessential mindset of the progressive liberal. … David Gordon has observed that Mill was not only a utopian, he was also ‘a propagandist anxious to replace Christianity with a Religion of Humanity, guided by intellectuals such as himself.’ In that sense Mill can be seen as typical of “The Anointed” as identified by Thomas Sowell.” (05/11/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/inconsistencies-john-stuart-mill

  • David French’s Zelensky Hero Worship Distorts Reality

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Ted Galen Carpenter

    “The type of hero worship of Ukraine and its leader that French, Thiessen, Lévy, and others have expressed deserves disdain from any analyst displaying even a scintilla of realism. Kiev’s military achievements have been overwhelmingly the result of extensive outside assistance. The United States and its European allies have poured several hundred billion dollars into Ukraine — despite ample evidence of the regime’s authoritarianism and corruption. … Ukraine’s Western cheerleaders habitually ignore such troublesome details. They also conveniently ignore the many abuses that Zelensky’s regime has committed over the years.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/david-frenchs-zelensky-hero-worship-distorts-reality/

  • A Libertarian Reckoning

    Source: Independent Political Report
    by Kimber Fountain

    “Critics can blame caucuses and opportunistic former chairpersons eternally, but that will not change the fact that the underlying reason the Libertarian Party cratered is because when it mattered, when the country needed it most, the party was recklessly usurped by people who abandoned an entire half of core libertarian values and chose instead the last thing independent voters desire: a small-minded, watered-down version of bigoted Republican tribalism with directions on the package that read, ‘just add weed.’ In the truth-bound, honest world where most libertarians and independents reside, integrity is what sells. Conviction is what drives the masses. Contrary to common protestations, the party was not destroyed by infighting; that is a convenient detraction from the fact that the breakdown was entirely due to the ease with which external forces infiltrated.” (05/11/26)

    https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2026/05/guest-essay-a-libertarian-reckoning/

  • The VRA Ruling Might Have Handed Republicans a Weapon to Attempt a Jan. 6-style Midterm Coup

    Source: The UnPopulist
    by Andy Craig

    “An outlandish scenario to refuse to seat newly elected blue state representatives just became more plausible.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-vra-ruling-might-have-handed

  • Don’t Harm Your Enemies. Make Them Less Harmful.

    Source: Aaron Ross Powell’s Blog
    by Aaron Ross Powell

    “To harm someone is to inflict suffering on them and to do so out of greed, hatred, or delusion — the three roots Pali Buddhism calls unwholesome. The suffering itself and the mental state and motivations of the person causing it go together in the analysis. The upshot is that, even toward enemies, it’s wrong and, well, harmful to cause harm. What we actually want is for our enemies to be less harmful, which means released from the unwholesome states that drive their harm-doing in the first place, and so less likely to inflict suffering on others, including on us.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3mlmbawtres2j

  • The Self-Indulgent, Dead-End Politics of AOC’s Partisan Liberalism

    Source: Glenn Greenwald
    by Glenn Greenwald

    “Ridglan Farms was forced to release thousands of beagles from hideous experiments because activists formed a trans-ideological coalition. AOC-style liberals would never dirty themselves in that way.” (05/11/26)

    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-self-indulgent-dead-end-politics

  • Remembering and Rebuking the Covid Regime

    Source: Independent Institute
    by Phillip W Magness

    “Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee’s In Covid’s Wake amply documents the consequences of pandemic-era policy and its destructive implications for public health.” (05/11/26)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2026/05/11/remembering-and-rebuking-the-covid-regime/